[Immanuel Morales]

But what about your third lesson on aescripting on motionscript? There you actually teach to use block scope. https://www.motionscript.com/ae-scripting/getting-started-3.html Does the site just need to be updated?

[Immanuel Morales]

cool! Glad I could help! 🙂 I’ll be looking forward to the final problem being resolved in your other thread.. Pretty interesting stuff anyhow

[Immanuel Morales]

ah.. then what you’ll have to do is plug the speed % into a variable. that way the “time*1.5” isn’t fixed, and it’ll vary with the animated speed %. so something like this..

velocity = effect("Twixtor")("Speed %")/100;
time*velocity;

[Immanuel Morales]

Well if I’m understanding (probably not), you simply need to know what frame is being shown at any given time – is that right? So I am just recommending that you use the source text of the text layer to display the result of the time distortion. for instance if you were at 150% speed, then at frame 10 in the comp you are at frame 15 in the footage. You just need that displayed at all times, right? to do that, you would simply put this into the source text.. “time*1.5” or if your twixtor settings were at 50% speed then you could put in “time*.5” etc. I imagine I’m just missing something that you’re trying to get across. Anyway, I hope that fixes it!

[Immanuel Morales]

Alright, well if you really need a frame reference, try plugging your distorted time result into the source text of a text layer and just throw it down by the lower left of the screen. Would that help?

[Immanuel Morales]

Ok clearly your head has exploded.. Put it together and think simply first lol.

First off, let’s just be clear here. You ARE trying to distort time, right? If that is the case, then it is to be expected that the frames will not match anymore because they have been offset by twixtor. If you slow down time, your footage will be longer. You speed it up, it will be shorter.

Secondly, there is no need for loop expressions in AE unless you’re scripting or making a plugin. This is because of the time object which you have called with the keyword “time”. In AE all expressions are re-evaluated on EVERY FRAME. So every expression is inevitably a ‘loop’ by definition and the “time” value increments by a value of 1.0 on every frame no matter what. See if you can design an expression with that in mind.

Also, if the clip length is giving you problems then you could keyframe the twixtor speed% to anchor the beginning and ending of the clip. btw, i’ve never heard of someone adjusting playback speed to fix tracking – just saying you might find out that it doesn’t work.

Lastly, If you’re getting this complex with camera stabilization, I’d say you might be biting off more than it’s worth. Have you considered the Warp Stabilizer?
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs-55-production-premium-feature-tour-/stabilize-shaky-footage-with-the-warp-stabilizer-in-after-effects-cs55/ It’s the latest in stabilization technology, using 3D point cloud camera tracking and intelligent warp distortion. There is a known artifact when it’s pushed to the extreme (think looking through a fishtank), but it may be worth it if the shot is that bad.

[Immanuel Morales]

I always end up telling people the same thing when it comes to controlling expressions: use the expression controls in the effects and presets and plug your variables into that. so for instance..

speed = thisComp.layer("whichever layers you'll use").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
amplitude = thisComp.layer("same layer as above").effect("Slider Control 2")("Slider");

tot = linear(time, 0, 4, 1.5, 8);
r = random(speed, amplitude);
c = clamp(r, 0, 1);
wiggle(tot, 700*c)

[Immanuel Morales]

try using .valueAtTime([time]-[seconds]) and .frameDuration*[number of frames].

var prev = thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider").valueAtTime(time-thisComp.frameDuration*2);

[Immanuel Morales]

yea you just need a variable to contain the speed in the effect. use “.speed” to access the speed of an animated property.

posSpeed = thisComp.layer("Camera").transform.position.speed;
poiSpeed = thisComp.layer("Camera").transform.pointOfInterest.speed;
var totalSpeed = posSpeed+poiSpeed;


[Immanuel Morales]

Nice, just keep in mind that you can actually refer to other comps in expression like this.

comp("comp name").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");